The Structure of Policy Evolution

Reviews / Votes

"Building from a basis in complexity science and work on technological innovation, this groundbreaking book moves forward thinking on policy change, an age-old concern in policy studies. Developing a "Structure-in-Evolution" approach and applying it to case studies in Denmark and the UK, the volume shows how policies evolve in stages with their component subsystems developing individually and non-uniformly, leading to unique and alternating periods of functional and procedural policy complexity and simplicity. Innovative in its own right, the book challenges policy scholars to think more deeply about policy dynamics, the potential for policy reform, and development."

Michael Howlett, Burnaby Mountain Professor and Canada Research Chair, Simon Fraser University, Canada.

"The ever-dynamic world and its forces of change impact policies, making even the most effective ones eventually obsolete. How policies evolve therefore should be an essential question for academics as well as practitioners who try to study and manage the evolutionary processes. By developing an innovative theoretical framework and combining it with empirical chapters, this path-breaking book persuasively demonstrates the importance of evolutionary and complexity thinking and, further yet, their unified potential in understanding policy change. It also provides practitioners with powerful new tools in supporting the policy development processes."

Norio Tokumaru, Professor of Economics, Faculty of Policy Studies, Kansai University, Japan